1  Flight SWR245 to New York

 

Hans Bräker, the President of Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaftsbank AG, the Swiss Confederation Bank, boarded the Swiss Air DC8 with a feeling of relief. He had been through checkout and darted into the luxury lounge, possibly one of the most secure places in the world apart from his own bank’s vaults, and taken a seat at the bar. There, he had ordered a very large Chivas Regal, lit a Marlboro and then ordered another large Chivas.

Behind the bar was a series of mirrors. These were apparently introduced by drinking establishments so that their patrons would be aware of the approach of any likely assassin. He looked in the mirror and saw assassins all around, from the old lady with her hideous, snappy, yappy lapdog to the young blond man with his fawn-eyed girlfriend  intent, apparently, only upon each other.

Bräker had left his wife and family less than two hours ago. He said a fond farewell, as he did every time he went off to some dull convention, aware that nothing should appear different from the dozen times he had to disappear every year. Flight was as routine to him as bus travel to the factory worker. Instead of traffic jams he had fog and ice and jam-packed roads to the airport with which to contend; he had delays and hotels and the feeling of itchy impermanence that gnaws at the nerves of every regular traveller.

This time though, he was glad to get away. He had spent weeks walking a tightrope, dealing surreptitiously with strange voices in strange lands, taut with fear and frustration, with guilt and paranoia. Shadows had become stalkers, stalkers had becomes killers. He was left with no choice but to flee, to put himself in the hands of strangers and hope that he would somehow be able to talk himself and his family out of this mess.

The call, preceded by a happy two-tone phrase, went out.

‘Flight SWR245 to New York is now ready to board. If you could have your boarding passes ready please. Thank you.’

Bräker felt a wave of relief envelop him. He felt stone cold within and yet knew that he had a fringe of sweat upon his brow. His shirt clung to him like cling-film while his fingers were as cold as death.

He picked up his hand luggage and went to the checkout. A very beautiful woman who smelled of peaches and looked like heaven checked his boarding pass and showed him the way. He thanked her. As he took back his pass, he noticed that his hands shook. He felt old. He felt haunted. He looked behind him. There was nobody there that shouldn’t have been there, but that was what you would expect of such ghosts – invisibility.

The stewardess at the plane’s door greeted him with a wide, warm smile and guided him towards first class. It looked cramped and dark and he welled with claustrophobia, had the urge to cry out and run, but his arm was taken by a fresh-faced young woman with blue eyes and blond hair and a smile that would crush the Devil himself, who looked at his pass and guided him towards his seat.

He sat and fought the impulse to flee, to bolt for the door, to run and keep on running, all over the world; to just disappear. A couple more drinks and a few cigarettes and he would be right. He was on his way; nothing could stop him now. He was in a steel shell protected by guardian angels with Saint Michael and Saint Christopher themselves at the helm. As if to nail himself to the spot, he put on the lap strap and pulled it tight.

The tension that had held him rigid for so long began to dissipate. He could actually feel his toes begin to relax, his mind begin to unknot. They, those strangers in a far-off land, would take care of him. They had promised. They had promised that, in exchange for his soul, they would give him the world or at least a small part of it, where he and his family could live in peace, unafraid, forever. Maybe now he could sleep. He felt like he hadn’t slept for months. He had gone to bed exhausted and woken feeling worse. His dreams were full of terrors, of running through mud or fighting an invisible foe. As he awoke, usually in a state of rigid panic, he would look at the clock, sure that he had slept through the night, only to find that barely ten minutes had passed since his last nightmare.

The plane’s doors closed and the aircraft taxied. The pretty girls went through their dance - arms out, arms up, hips out two, three, four and pull down the mask – then took their seats in their own corners of the cabin.

The engine grew from a whine into a roar. Bräker was pushed back into his seat, while outside the window the terminal building, the runway, the roads to the airport, the city, the skyscrapers, the world, slipped gracefully, beautifully by.

The seat belt and no smoking signs went out. Bräker reached for his cigarettes even before he took off his belt. My God! How he wanted a cigarette. How he wanted to feel the smoke bite into his lungs and the flood of nicotine as it swept like a tidal wave through him and melted the tensions within.

He took out his lighter. It was an engraved silver Zippo from his wife that she had got him for his fortieth birthday. It had never been out of his pocket in the fourteen years he had had it. It was his good luck charm, his reminder of how blessed he was.

He flicked the lid then struck the wheel.

 

The spark coincided with a roar. He gazed at the lighter as if it could possibly have been the case of such a sound. Oxygen masks fell like tentacles and taunted those below them as they swayed to and fro with the roll of the plane. There was pandemonium as the air was filled with screams. People left their seats, found they had nowhere to go and simply froze in the aisle like the ashen ancients of Pompeii. Then, as if pulled by a giant hand, they were yanked from the plane and cast through an enormous hole into the darkness. He saw people fly by as the cabin of the plane disintegrated. Chairs were ripped from their mounts, some still occupied, some empty, and sucked out of the plane. The overhead lockers fell like broken jaws and vomited their contents everywhere, each piece of luggage becoming a weapon as it hurtled through the cabin and struck someone.

Bräker saw a piece of metal hurtle towards him like a spear. He tried to duck, but he was rooted to the chair by his belt. The jagged, foot long shard speared his chest, pinned him to his chair. A whoosh of flame roared through the cabin and came at him at a hundred miles an hour. Before it hit him, he was sucked from the plane, seat-bound, and hurtled towards the ground, all about him screams and bodies and debris illuminated by a pale orange light from above. He looked for his lighter. It was still in his hand. He wrapped it in his fist.

‘My God!’ he thought. ‘They did it. They actually did it.’

 

 

2  Muddy Enough for Boots

 

Mike Ward signed off on some papers, put them into the out tray at the edge of his desk and plucked another pile of papers from the in tray. It was tedious work. It was repetitive. It was all part of the job. The piece of paperwork which he signed and was then reassigned was as important as all the guns and the skulking around beneath the enemies’ skirts. One of those black and white memorandums or weighty reports might be the difference between life and death for some poor sod on the other side of the world, so he read every one and made sure that it went to the right people, even if it meant putting it in their hands himself.

The day was always broken by something a little less routine anyway. Later, he had a self-defence session to look forward to. Not only did that relieve the knots he gained from sitting in a chair behind a desk, but it released some of the tension that came with being on a leash. Other days were filled with lectures, both from him and to him and sessions with the armourer to keep his eye in and his wits sharp.

He also, thanks to his training as a journalist, spent much of his time researching. It was his forte and something he had always enjoyed; probably the nosiness of the journo being satisfied. Brooks, the Chief of Staff and the Chief himself indulged him. They were perfectly aware that he had contacts and that he knew how to get to the nubbin of something, so they let him get on with it. He had by now collected quite an encyclopaedia of facts and figures about terrorism across the world, about the names to watch for, the types of weapons and explosives used, the connections between one event and another and kept it all, in strict alphabetical order, in a single grey filing cabinet in the corner of his office. He could, once he was satisfied, then disseminate his findings to the appropriate people. The mornings would be spent doing the routine stuff such as he was doing now and the afternoons were generally his to wander London’s libraries, the newspaper archives where he still had friendly contacts or the service archives in search of titbits to add to his own growing library.

Of course, it was personal too. He would never admit to that, not to Brooks or to the Chief, but there were scores to be settled, debts to be repaid, and every bit of ink on every scrap of paper would take him closer to his goal. He had perhaps seven or eight years left of active duty to find what he wanted, before he was permanently strapped to a desk and force-fed paperwork until it came out of his ears. It was, as ever, a race against time.

The phone on his desk rang. He had picked it up by the end of the first ring.

‘Ward.’

‘The Chief would like to see you, Mr Ward.’ Heather Thornton’s voice came down the line as sharp as a knife. As the Chief’s secretary, she was usually the second person in the building to get any news. She was a formidable woman with a heart of gold, encased in stone.

‘Immediately?’

‘Yes, Mr Ward.’ She hung up.

Ward felt a thrill run through him. There was always the chance that when the Chief wanted him, it was for something big. Anything unimportant came to Ward through lesser hands. When the Chief wanted him, he was either in trouble or about to be thrown into the deep end.

He put the papers back into the in tray, pushed his chair beneath his desk and stepped out into the bare, white-walled corridor.

Mrs Thornton sat at her desk and typed. She must have had fingers of steel by now, thought Ward. He knocked and went in. Mrs Thornton finished the sentence she was typing and then looked up. She didn’t smile, but the corners of her mouth turned up slightly. Ward took it as a compliment. It had taken him a long time to thaw her even a little.

‘Go straight in, Mr Ward.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Thornton. Any bees I should know about?’

‘Oh, a whole hive, Mr Ward. A whole hive.’

It was a private moment that had developed between them about how the Chief got certain bees in his bonnet about certain things and would launch himself into tirades until even he had forgotten what it was he was hammering on about. It was also Ward’s way of getting some sort of heads-up about the Chief’s mood. Many bees meant much harrumphing and a stinging-nettle combativeness about the old man. A whole hive meant that very few got out of there without a painful lump or two.

Ward raised an eyebrow, straightened his tie and knocked twice upon the Chief’s door.

He didn’t wait for a reply. If Mrs Thornton said he could go in, then he could go in. The knock was simply good manners.

As ever, the Chief had a sheaf of papers before him, each waiting for him to write his C in green ink upon them. It was a stamp of authority.

Ward walked up to the Chief’s desk. ‘Morning, sir.’

‘Sit down, Ward. Brooks will be along in a moment. He’s just…well…doing what Brooks does. Have you heard about the Swissair flight? SWR245?’

‘That’s the badger. What do you know?’

Ward crossed his legs and relaxed a little. The Chief’s mood did not seem to be as bad as he been led to believe. ‘Only what I’ve read in the papers, sir. It took off from Geneva at 21.15 and a quarter of an hour in contact was lost. Witnesses speak of an explosion. The authorities have put it down to bird-strike.’

‘Hmm.’ The Chief picked up his pipe and emptied the dead ash then took out a tin of St Bruno, folded the concertinaed paper back slowly  and began to refill the bowl. This was his thinking time. Job done, he struck a match. ‘What do you think of that?’

‘Well, unless it was a couple of ostriches…’

‘Quite.’ The Chief put the flame to the tobacco. Smoke billowed. ‘Smoke if you wish.’

‘Thank you.’ Ward took out a packet of Senior Service and lit one. ‘If a bird flies into an engine, it might cause a compressor stall, a couple of backfires as excess fuel is burned off, create a couple of loud bangs, but that’s about it usually. It’s scary for the passengers, but most of the time far from fatal. The DC-8 has four sturdy Pratt and Whitney engines. It’s a hefty beast. I think as a cause for the explosion, it’s paper thin.’

The Chief pointed the stem of his pipe at Ward. ‘And you’d be right. It came down just inside France, on the edge of Réserve Naturelle Nationale de la Haute Chaîne du Jura, some sort of national park. Well, some of it did. The debris is spread all over the place.’ He looked at his watch. ‘What the hell, it’s almost lunchtime. Fancy a whisky?’

Ward almost fell off his chair. Far from the wounded bear he had expected to find, the Chief was being as charming as could be. Ward would have to have a word with Mrs Thornton when he left, winding him up like that.

‘Always, sir,’ he said.

‘Jolly good. I’ve got some of that Johnny Walker Black Label. Very nice tipple. Didn’t pay for it myself; won it at bridge.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Bit of a side bet, if you know what I mean.’

‘Absolutely, sir.’

There was a knock on the door. Peter Brooks came in.

‘Ah, Brooks. Just in time. Fancy one?’

Brooks looked at Ward as if he had walked into some sort of trap. ‘Yes. Thank you, sir.’

The chief poured out three generous measures and handed them out, then retreated behind his desk. They all took a sip and all tilted their heads in appreciation and admiration.

The Chief popped his pipe into his mouth and savoured the mix of tobacco and alcohol. For a moment he drifted somewhere pleasant, then came back into the room.

‘Have you done your homework, Brooks?’

Brooks put a folder onto the Chief’s desk. The Chief pulled it across to him, opened it and began to read. Ward and Brooks knew better than to interrupt and so savoured their drinks and waited.

The Chief growled as he closed the folder and put it on his desk. ‘Are you sure about all that?’ he asked Brooks.

‘As I can be at this time, sir.’

The Chief nodded his head. ‘Well, that’s a bit of a bugger, but we shouldn’t be surprised, I supposed.’

‘No, sir,’ said Brooks.

Ward cleared his throat. ‘With respect, sir. Might I ask what the Swissair disaster has to do with us? It’s a foreign plane over foreign soil; I see no reason for us to become involved.’

‘You might well ask, Ward. You might well ask. And, initially, I might have been inclined to agree with you. But, since nine pm a couple of days ago we’ve slapped a notice on anything to do with Swissair flight SWR245.’

‘Why?’

The chief exchanged a quick glance with Brooks. ‘Well, it’s all got a bit muddy.’

‘Muddy, sir?’

‘Muddy enough for Wellington boots I’m afraid, Ward.’ He stood up and grabbed his coat from a stand in the corner of the room. ‘Come on. I’ve got a table reserved for the three of us for twelve at my club. I think we should talk about this over wine and full stomachs.’